WALNUT CREEK, Calif. — Brett Dalton admits he was “a little frightened” when he arrived for his first day of work on the set of “Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” — even if his initial scene figured to...

Comment

By
Chuck Barney
Posted Sep. 24, 2013 @ 12:01 am

WALNUT CREEK, Calif. — Brett Dalton admits he was “a little frightened” when he arrived for his first day of work on the set of “Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” — even if his initial scene figured to be a breeze.

All he had to do was walk from one end of a room to another when director Joss Whedon signaled “action.” And Dalton did so, it seemed, without a hitch.

Then he saw Whedon rushing toward him, and he panicked.

“What the hell are you doing?” the filmmaker bellowed. “How could you mess that up?”

Dalton’s heart froze for an instant — just before he realized Whedon was messing with him.

“He could sense that I was nervous and wanted to let me know there was no need to stress out,” recalls Dalton, who is making his debut as a TV series regular. “He got me laughing and broke the tension. It was much easier after that.”

You can understand why Dalton, or anyone associated with the show, might be a little on edge. “Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.,” an ambitious offshoot of last year’s big-screen blockbuster, “The Avengers,” is the most high-profile, high-stakes endeavor of the fall season. It’s Marvel’s first live-action foray into television and signals the return of Whedon (“Buffy the Vampire Slayer”), a revered geek god, to prime time.

“There’s a lot of pressure on this show, for sure,” Dalton says during a phone conversation. “There’s a big budget and some really big expectations.”

Even so, success is by no means guaranteed. Yes, when the “S.H.I.E.L.D.” pilot episode debuted at Comic-Con this summer, it received a rapturous response from fan boys and girls, who ate up every morsel of its fast-paced action, slick production values, cool gadgets and Whedonesque wit. But the show will have to reach well beyond the core comic-book fan base to have a shot at longevity.

And there are some substantial obstacles. “S.H.I.E.L.D.” is airing on ABC, a network known more for soapy shenanigans than super heroics, and it’s in a time slot that pits it against “NCIS,” TV’s No. 1 drama. Moreover, it has the daunting challenge of trying to lure viewers to a show that is only loosely connected to “The Avengers” and doesn’t feature Thor, Iron Man or The Hulk.

Instead, the focus will be on characters who don’t possess stupendous powers - the mortals, as Whedon says, “who didn’t get the hammer or the super soldier serum.”

“The thing that appealed to me from the very beginning was the idea that everybody matters, that the people who get shunted to the side in a giant epic can take the spotlight,” Whedon told reporters at the TV critics summer media tour. “You know, the underdog, the common man.”

These underdogs in “S.H.I.E.L.D.,” which stands for Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division, are a group of quirky operatives who travel the globe in a high-tech plane as they investigate bizarre threats to humanity. The story picks up where “The Avengers” left off, after the epic Battle of New York, in which aliens raided Manhattan. Now, the public is aware that superheroes - and super villains - do exist.

Leading the covert agency is top cop Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg) - yes, the same likable bureaucrat who was killed by Loki in “The Avengers.” His return from the dead will be explained as the series unfolds, but for now, Gregg is just thrilled to be part of the fun.

“I feel like they’ve put together an amazing team with a really interesting idea,” he says. “I’m completely compelled by the idea of a world post-’Avengers’ where things are out of control, and humans are once again either eager to get ahold of, or are already in possession of, things we aren’t really socially evolved to the point of dealing with.”

Coulson’s agents include Grant Ward (Dalton), a “lone wolf” highly trained in combat and espionage, Skye (Chloe Bennet), a mysterious computer hacker, and Melinda May, an expert pilot and martial artist played by Ming-Na Wen, the former “E.R.” star who now gets to show off her fighting skills.

“It’s wonderful to be put to task and having to raise the bar and do the training to really be able to carry this character off,” Wen says. “I’m really enjoying it, surprisingly, because I normally hate working out. But I do like kicking a--.”

As for the Ward character, Dalton describes him as “a one-man ninja, or a Swiss Army Knife” - a guy with a vast variety of talents, but no people skills.

“Before being recruited to this agency, he was used to going it alone and being the sole solution to any problem,” Dalton explains. “He’s not used to being part of a team, so he’s struggling to adapt.”

Dalton is adapting just fine to his first major screen role. A relative newcomer to Hollywood, he received a master’s degree from the Yale School of Drama in 2011 after graduating from UC Berkeley. Other than a few TV guest stints on shows such as “Army Wives” and “Blue Bloods,” his resume was hardly eye-popping when he went in for his first “S.H.I.E.L.D.” audition.

“I initially thought there was no way in hell that I would get this role. It seemed like they saw everyone in the world,” says Dalton, who admits he was a comic-book nerd as a kid. “But Joss has a history of taking chances on someone new, and clearly, it has worked for him.”

Whedon, who co-wrote the pilot with his brother Jed and sister-in-law Maurissa Tancharoen, is on board to write and direct “The Avengers” big-screen sequel, so it isn’t clear how much involvement he will be able to have with the TV show. But he pledges that the producing team he has put in place will keep things fresh and interesting on an episode-to-episode basis.

“Every week, it’s not going to be some new hero. It can be a device. It can be a mystery,” he says. “We want to deal with every aspect - spy stuff, hero stuff, heartfelt stuff, humor. We want something that feels a bit different, so it’s not just turkey every day.”